ANNALES DE L’I. H. P., SECTION A WOLFGANG GRAF Differential forms as spinors Annales de l’I. H. P., section A, tome 29, no 1 (1978), p. 85-109 <http://www.numdam.org/item?id=AIHPA_1978__29_1_85_0> © Gauthier-Villars, 1978, tous droits réservés. L’accès aux archives de la revue « Annales de l’I. H. P., section A » implique l’accord avec les conditions générales d’utilisation (http://www.numdam. org/conditions). Toute utilisation commerciale ou impression systématique est constitutive d’une infraction pénale. Toute copie ou impression de ce fichier doit contenir la présente mention de copyright. Article numérisé dans le cadre du programme Numérisation de documents anciens mathématiques http://www.numdam.org/ Ann. Inst. Henri Poincare, Section A : Vol. XXIX. n° L 1978. p. 85 Physique’ théorique.’ Differential forms as spinors Wolfgang GRAF Fachbereich Physik der Universitat, D-7750Konstanz. Germany ABSTRACT. 2014 An alternative notion of spinor fields for spin 1/2 on a pseudoriemannian manifold is proposed. Use is made of an algebra which allows the interpretation of spinors as elements of a global minimal Clifford- ideal of differential forms. The minimal coupling to an electromagnetic field is introduced by means of an « U(1 )-gauging ». Although local Lorentz transformations play only a secondary role and the usual two-valuedness is completely absent, all results of Dirac’s equation in flat space-time with electromagnetic coupling can be regained. 1. INTRODUCTION It is well known that in a riemannian manifold the laplacian D := - (d~ + ~d) operating on differential forms admits as « square root » the first-order operator ~ 2014 ~ ~ being the exterior derivative and e) the generalized divergence. In 1928 Dirac solved a similar problem in the riemann-flat manifold of special relativity by introducing the differential matrix operator 2014 ax~‘ acting on spinor fields. That these two problems and their solutions despite their appearance are essentially the same was not recognized until 1960/1961, when E. Kahler showed ( 1 ) that at least for flat space-time Dirac’s equation ( 1 ) Compare also Lichnerowicz (1962, 19b4) with regard to the Petiau-Duffin-Kemmer algebra. Annales de l’Institut Henri Poincare - Section A - Vol. XXIX. n° 1 - 1978. 86 W. GRAF can be completely reinterpreted in terms of certain inhomogeneous differential forms ~ obeying It is our purpose to develop the corresponding notion of spinor field on a riemannian manifold based entirely on differential forms and to propose it as a conceptually more economical alternative to the usual notion (2). Our proposal will rest on the following facts, most of them classical (3 ) a) spinors (for spin 1/2) emerge naturally in the representation theory of Clifford-algebras (whereas the Lorentz group has in addition also tensor and higher spin representations), b) there is an isomorphism of the linear structures underlying a Clif- ford-algebra over a vector space V with inner product on the one hand and the exterior algebra over V on the other hand, c) the Grassmann-algebra over V can be regarded in a natural way as a (reducible) representation module of the Clifford-algebra over V, d) the finite dimensional irreducible representations of the Clifford- algebra are isomorphic (as modules) to its minimal ideals, e) there is a unique bijection (implicit in Chevalley (1954), explicitly given by Kähler (1960) and also used by Atiyah (1970)) which for a given vector space V and quadratic form Q maps any Clifford-algebra onto the corresponding Grassmann-algebra ( = exterior algebra with inner product induced by Q), f ) this map extends to the corresponding differential operators : Dirac’s operator on the one hand, J 2014 5 on the other. The main difference to the usual treatment of spin or fields is our use of vector bundles related to the cotangent bundle instead of principal bundles with structure groups homomorphic to the rotation groups 0(p, q). This choice guarantees the naturalness of f ) and amounts to considerable technical simplifications. Another peculiarity worth mentioning is the following : our algebras and bundles, being derived from the cotangent space of real manifolds, will be primarily over the reals. Their complexification is then made by « gauging » with the circle group D(I). This has the advantage of automati- cally introducing minimal interactions in terms of gauge-covariant deri- vatives. {2) In which a spinor field on a riemannian manifold is a cross section of the associated bundle of type id to the spin bundle which is an extension of the bundle of orthonormal frames (comp. Lichnerowicz (1964)). e) Comp. Brauer and Weyl (1935), Chevalley (1954), Rashevskii (1957), Bourbaki (1959). de l’Institut Henri Poincaré - Section A DIFFERENTIAL FORMS AS SPINORS 87 A very thorough analysis of representations of Clifford-bundles was done by Karrer (1973) and recently slightly generalized from a different of view point by Popovici (1976). _ 2. SOME ALGEBRAS AND THEIR RELATIONS Let us start from a real n (finite) dimensional vector space V (in our later applications it will be the cotangent space of a differentiable manifold) and recall some definitions and elementary properties (comp. Chevalley (1954, 1955), Bourbaki (1958, 1959)) : A) The tensor algebra T(V) over IR is the [R-vector space of the direct sum of the powers (8) PY together with the usual associative tensor product 0 ~I of its elements. Since V is a finite dimensional vector space, it is canonically isomorphic to its image (8) 1 V in T(V). Therefore we will identify (8) 1 V with V and define Q9 °y := IR. This tensor-algebra T(V)= 0 ) is 7 -graded : (8) c and infinite-dimensional if n > 1. On T(V) there are two important involutive morphisms (both being linear automorphisms of 3 (8) a) the main automorphism (X with b) the main anti-automorphism 03B2 mapping T(V) to its opposite algebra: B) The exterior algebra A(V) over the R vector space V can be defined as the quotient-algebra T(V)/J of T(V) by the two-sided ideal J c T(V) generated by the elements of the form a Q9 a, where a E V. As customary, we will denote exterior multiplication by the sign 11. Since J is homogeneous in the Z-gradation of T(V) also A(V) is Z-graded: with As before, we make the = = identifications A 1 (V) V and [R. The subspaces Ap(V) are (;)-dimensional and A(V) is 2n-dimensional. For homogeneous elements and b E A q(V), their exterior product is either commutative or anticommutative Vol. XXIX, n° 1 - 1978. 88 W. GRAF The morphisms a and /3 of T(V) pass to the quotient A(V). Denoting them with the same symbols a and 03B2 we now have C) As Grassmann-algebra A(V, Q) we will denote the pair (A(V), Q) consisting of an exterior algebra A(V) together with an inner product (, )Q : A(V) x A(V) -~ [R induced in A(V) by a quadratic form Q over V as follows (4) : then (a, b)Q := det b~)), where B is the bilinear form associated to Q by iii) the case of general a, b E A(V) can then be reduced by linearity to i ) and ii). D) The Clifford-algebra C(V, Q) of the real vector space V with quadratic form Q is defined as the quotient algebra T(V)/J’, where the two-sided ideal J’ is generated by elements of the form a Q a - 1, with As before, we can and will identify V with its image in C(V, Q). Denoting Clifford-multiplication by the sign V (5), we have for a, b E V the familiar relations (6) with the bilinear form B as defined in (2.10). The ideal J’ being inhomo- the Clifford- geneous of even degree in T(V) induces a Z2-gradation of algebra, C(V, Q) = C+ + C-, where C+ is the image of the elements of odd even degree in T(V) and C- is the image of the elements of degree in T(V). Since a(J’) = ~i(J’) = J’, the morphisms a and ~i induce morphisms (designated by the same symbols) in C(V, Q) we shall also write a . b. {4) If there is no danger of confusion, instead of (a, b)Q instead of a V b. e) If there is no risk of confusion, we will also write ab {6) Compare for example Kastler (1961). More suggestively, if ets is any basis in V, we have eiej + with gI’ := ej). l’Institut Henri Poincaré - Section A DIFFERENTIAL FORMS AS SPINORS 89 The Clifford-algebra as defined above although closely related is not even abstractly isomorphic to the Clifford-algebra generally used in physics, which is a matrix algebra generated by matrices yi such that yV + 03B3j03B3i = Whereas the former is an algebraic structure with a distinguished subspace V, the latter does not pay attention to the parti- cular set of yi (in fact, all such sets are equivalent under yi H :t This distinction can also be seen in their automorphism groups : for non- degenerate Q, for the former it is the ( J-parametric rotation group q)~ whereas for the latter it is an (2" - 1 ) (resp. (2n - 2))-parametric Lie group for n even (resp. odd). 3. THE KÄHLER-ATIYAH ALGEBRA In this section we will define a new algebraic structure (7) over Q Ap(V) containing both the Grassmann-algebra A(V, Q) and the Clifford- algebra C(V, Q) as substructures. First, for any element X of the dual vector space V* define the contrac- tion of an element of T(V).